A Barnes university student is rowing more than 100 miles from Putney Bridge to Oxford in memory of her late father who died of brain tumour.

Former Putney High School pupil Jo Heymann, of The Crescent, aims to raise £20,000 for charity Cancer Research while remembering 55-year-old Dr Tim Heymann.

The 19-year-old Oxford University engineering student – who competed in the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race last year – is determined to complete the ‘challenging’ trip in three days.

She said: “I was obviously really impacted by my dad’s death. It took place over many months and we just sort of watched him deteriorate, and I wanted to do something that could contribute to helping so that other families didn’t have to go through that or that other people didn’t have to do that.

“He was just incredible, really. He was so, so smart. He went to Cambridge [University] and studied medicine, graduating top of his year, from Christ’s College. He was just a really, really wonderful dad and he did so many wonderful things for many people and his patients and his friends really loved him.

“He was there before we went to school and after we got back from school. We would go and sit in his study and just talk about anything and everything. He was a big fan of hiking and we used to go on hiking holidays and skiing.”

Jo says the row is usually done with boats comprising of eight rowers while the trek is often done with the boats rowing with the flow of the river, rather than against it.

She will begin by rowing the Boat Race course before continuing all the way to Boathouse Island, in Oxford, where she will be greeted by her friends.

Dr Heymann, who was also a consultant gastroentereologist at Kingston Hospital for 20 years, graduated in 1983 and is survived by his wife Amanda and three children – Theo, Jo, and Nicholas.

More than £3,500 has been raised of the £20,000 target so far at the time of writing.

To see the JustGiving page, click here.